This invention relates to both the electronic module design and the related mounting mechanism of an electronic system, and more particularly, to an electronic system comprising a plurality of internal and external electronic modules and an external enclosure case for mounting all these modules.
The electronic packaging designs for many notebook or subnotebook computers have been dramatically improved by many computer vendors to increase their modularity and manufactureability. Many electronic modules such as hard drive, battery, modem, mouse, keyboard, etc, are externally attached to the portable computers and can be installed or replaced by users directly. But such external module solutions can only be used to partially modularize a portable computer externally. Many internal components such as motherboard, daughterboard, etc, and the internal mounting mechanisms are also greatly simplified by those portable computer vendors for easy assembly and handling. But unfortunately most of those internal components and mounting mechanisms designs can only be used in a product-by-product base and can not be used as a uniform internal module and mounting mechanism design.
Lack of a proper internal module design not only prevents the complete internal modularization, but also makes the external modularization difficult. Most of the existing external modules are too closely tied to their internal hardware and case ID design. Their dispositions are mostly fixed because all their internal hardware and mounting mechanisms are also fixed. If a new ! internal module and mounting mechanism design can be provided to completely modularize all the internal components, the external modules and their mounting mechanisms can also be created according to the new internal module and mounting mechanism. Besides, if proper I/O port options can also be provided in the new internal module design, many existing external modules can be designed as new internal modules and thus can get better protection from the external enclosure case.
Modularity and reliability become more and more important when the portable computers are more frequently used in many fields. It is important to provide the computer users a flexible and reliable solution so that they can configure the computers according to their needs, and assemble or even maintain such computers by themselves. Such goal can not be achieved if a portable computer can not be completely modularized internally and externally. Apparently, the modular designs used in existing portable computers can not achieve this goal. New internal and external modules and the related mounting mechanisms must be devised to achieve it.